Stefania Carpano
ESA XMM-Newton, Postdoc
My research topic is the study of the X-ray population of nearby
spiral galaxies, and in particular I have studied the population of
the dwarf galaxy NGC300. About 90 sources are visible in the
galaxy field. During my PhD thesis, I extracted some global
properties for these sources, like their X-ray colors and flux. I
also tried to classify the sources in several categories according
mainly to their X-ray colors and informations from their
optical/radio counterpart. A three color image of the galaxy and
the corresponding color-color diagram can be found in the
XMM-Newton image gallery. I also studied in more detail some of
the brightest sources, trying to identify their nature and
behaviour.
As second research topic, I'm studying a cluster of galaxies, which
is close to the field of NGC300. This cluster is very interesting
because the conclusions from the optical survey are in
contradiction with what is observed in X-rays. In optical
wavelengths, there are two clusters which are embedded into two
distinct haloes, and with two different redshifts. This suggests
that the two clumps are in a pre-merging phase. On the other hand,
in X-rays we see only one single halo centered in between the two
clusters. An explanation of this, is that the two clumps have just
crossed each other. We absolutely need an on-axis XMM-Newton
observation of the cluster to be able to define its merging
status.